Six Months in the Merchant Marine

This is very interesting to me. Need a job and/or adventure? Why not try it?

I like yachts.

I like yachts.

40′-74′ is the sweet spot for me. At that size, a family can comfortably live aboard (as long as they want), you can captain them yourself, and they are fully sea-worthy. Take them, literally, all around this water planet.

Here’s what matters to me in a yacht:

1. First, the layout. It must have space and make good use of the space. The layout must be intelligently thought-out and be beautiful.
2. Second, the range and fuel consumption. This makes me look twice at sailboats. You may not know this, but motor boats get poor gas mileage. And by poor I mean 0.20 mpg. You read that correctly. Sporty yachts get 1/5 mile per gallon. There are several motor yachts that have the range to take you from California to Hawaii… but it will cost you around $5,000 for fuel. One way. (It is 2,200 nautical miles from LA to Hawaii.)
3. The quality of the materials, components, and construction. Nordhavn yachts are not the sexiest (as you will see), but Nordhavn yachts are, well, the best.
4. How many people can sleep on it. This is kind of number 1, repeated.
5. Is not a traditional sailboat. Sailboats are so elegant and natural, their power is free, and they have essentially unlimited range. But the keeling (leaning over under wind) is the deal-breaker. And working the sails is hard work—you don’t arrive refreshed. And you are going to get wet. I do like sail catamarans, though.

Here are my favorite yacht makers, in order (side point: why are there so many boat makers?! There are literally hundreds! It must be easier/cheaper to make boats than autos?):

1. Wally (so beautiful it hurts. Remember the Wally 118 from the movie, “The Island”?)
2. Nordhavn
3. Horizon (some catamarans)
4. Ferretti
5. Sunreef (catamarans, some sailing)
6. Fairline
7. Lazzara
8. Azimut
9. Sunseeker
10. Outer Reef
11. Marquis
12. Princess
13. Prout International (some multi-hulls, some sailing)
14. Gunboat (sailing catamarans)
15. Fountaine Pajot (catamarans, some sailing)
16. Almost made the list: Cantieri di Pisa (too long, but too legendary and too well-made to not mention.) Riva (beautiful, overpriced, no flybridge?), Pershing (breathtaking, I don’t value speed that much), Leopard, Mangusta (both beautiful, both too large), Hatteras, San Lorenzo, Inrizzardi, Rodman, Hargrave, and Uniesse (all lovely, but don’t move me)
17. Didn’t make the list: all the mega yachts (there are dozens!), which are as impressive as they are trying to be. And which are out of reach, even to dream about. And which require full crews.

Here are some of my favorite yachts:

Wally 73
Length: 73′
Range: 345mi
Fuel consumption: 0.33 mpg @ 30 mph
Sleeps: 8

Nordhavn 62
Length: 62′
Range: 4,000 mi
Fuel consumption: +/- 2mpg @ 6.5 mph
Sleeps: 9

Azimut 70
Length: 70′
Range: 300 nm
Fuel consumption: 0.3 mpg @ 30 mph
Sleeps: 11

Horizon PC58
Length: 58′
Range: 1,000mi ??
Fuel consumption: +/- 6mpg @ 20 mph
Sleeps: 6

How to Be the Luckiest Person on the Planet in Four Easy Steps

A useful (possibly life-changing) list by the interesting James Altucher.

Kevin Elliot turned it into a one-page PDF. Print it and put it on the bathroom mirror.

One of the most remarkable stories I have ever heard.

Juliane Koepcke was flying over the Peruvian rainforest with her mother when her plane was hit by lightning. She survived a two-mile fall and found herself alone in the jungle, just 17. More than 40 years later, she recalls what happened.

Snapshots from O’Hare. A writing exercise.

Snapshots from Chicago-O’Hare. Nov 5, 2011. 11:00am – 1:00pm

A tired man drops the weight of his body into the padded airport chair. With thick hands, he pulls a wad of napkins out of a paper bag. He pulls the food out of the thin, noisy paper bag. His sandwich spills out of the paper wrapping onto the low table where he had set the bag and napkins. He pinches up a fistful of shredded lettuce, tomato slices, and half a pickle and drops them back onto the sandwich.

Across the terminal walkway, a bulky, young man makes working at the airport McDonalds his own stage. He tries to get customers to come to his register instead of other registers, he jokes with the customers and listens to their stories, he teases his co-workers. He switches between Spanish and English to spread his bountiful, nervous joy.

A stunning African-American family walks into the waiting area. The radiant little girl, maybe six years old, has wild, pink shoes. Her soft, tiny curls are so thick that her shoulder-length hair extends wider than her shoulders. Everything makes her smile or giggle. She climbs into her daddy’s lap and won’t leave though she twists, leans, and crawls around in his lap. The dad is reading something on his phone, and he frowns as she shifts and bounces and throws her arms around his neck and scoots under his arm and then lays over onto her older brother in the next seat.

The dad gets up to stretch his legs. The girl follows him and leans against his leg. The dad continues to read his phone. She reaches her arms up to him, and he chuckles and picks her up. She wraps herself around him. She scoots up higher in his arms and lays her head into his neck. The dad is smiling as he reads. She slides down out of his arms and grabs his hand and swings his arm, laughing.

Next to me, a thin, weathered man with combed white hair and a short white beard is reading an old, square, hardbound book that has English and French together on each page. He marks some pages with skinny Post-it strips, and he occasionally chuckles out loud as he reads. He wears Merrill shoes and wool socks.

An older, round couple sit down across from him and begin to talk together about the trip to Alaska that they have begun. The thin man’s head snaps up and he adds himself to their conversation. He offers information authoritatively. The older couple ask questions. The more the thin man talks, the louder his voice and larger his gestures become. He now cannot stop himself and moves from offering information to giving orders, telling them what they should do on their visit to Alaska. The thin man has fished in each river the couple has heard about on TV. He has hunted in the wilderness they have read about. He has explored on foot the ice fields they want to fly over. He knows when the boats and planes run and when the Northern Lights are visible and what flights take you from Seattle to Alaska. The husband fades out of the conversation. The older woman asks the thin man how he knows so much. The thin man has lived in Alaska for 34 years on a small island across from a small town. He races bikes and swims in the bay.

The gate is crowded by now and a woman in her 50s arrives alone. She is dressed in a bright pink shirt, light green sweater, and grey pants with the elastic band pulled up over her stomach. She wears a plastic, pink butterfly brooch covered in sparkles, and she wears a small piece of carved wood on a necklace. She laughs easily and has long, grey, un-styled hair. She finds someone she knows waiting for the same flight and stands by them, talking and laughing. “I had to go barefoot this morning.” she says in one of her stories. She pulls a t-shirt from her bright turquoise, flower-print carry-on. She is thrilled with the shirt and tells its story. She pulls several books on plants from her bag and tells about each one with wide, excited eyes. Each story is punctuated with laughter.

Seated behind where she stands is a middle-aged woman who glances absently around. Her blue, striped shirt is tucked into high-waisted, plain jeans. She does not wear a belt. She has white, Apple ear buds connected to an iPhone in a pink case in her breast pocket. She sits with her knees together and her hands tucked between her legs. She occasionally presses her lips together.

A man in a beige shirt with chrome snaps for buttons finds the last open seat. He wears rubber-shoed black ropers and an expensive-looking, worn leather jacket. He has rectangle-framed glasses and styled hair. He sits down and digs for a magazine in a large computer bag. He slides down in the chair and opens Field and Stream magazine. He reads every ad and article.

Next to him is a college student with full lips and eyes so dark they are almost black. There is an announcement over the intercom. She pulls her passport from an inner coat pocket and leafs through a pile of folded papers and ID cards in the passport. She stuffs them back into the passport and puts it back in the pocket. She wears fitted grey slacks with light grey pinstripes and zippers that go up the inner seam from hem to knee. She wears several layers. One is a thick, soft sweater of green, black, grey, and white stripes; the kind of sweater with thumb holes so the cuffs cover most of the hand. Her bare fingers move in jerking motions over the keyboard and trackpad of a small, black netbook computer. She wears a couple of necklaces and a green, plaid, stretchy wool hat with a tiny bill. Her thick, black hair is pulled up under the hat.

Next to her, a thick man sits with his legs spread, feet pointing out, each forearm on an armrest. He squints and talks about what he has eaten that day. He drinks from a straw in a large McDonalds cup. His baseball hat and turquoise t-shirt look new. His jeans are dirty and stained. He is unshaven. Someone in the seat across from him hands him the thick burger they could not finish. Between bites and sentences, he belches or scratches the back of his head. The hamburger is gone, and he licks each finger. He holds the cup by its top and sucks through the straw. He shakes the cup and sucks again. It is time to board their plane. He picks up a large, Oakley backpack and a huge military laundry bag and puts these on a cart with wheels. The rows are crowded, and he lifts the cart from one side to another to get through the aisles.

Everyone boards the plane. The gate is empty.

(This was written during a few hours waiting in the terminal. It was edited over most of the day. As published, it represents well over a hundred individual edits.)

Wake up. And live.

I don’t want my class to be a waste. The only way to keep it from being that is if my class helps young people Find Themselves.

Wake up. Wake them up. We must awake from our sleep. And start living.

“Tell me…do you not feel a spirit stirring within you that longs to know, to do, and to dare, to hold converse with the great world of thought, and hold before you some high and noble object to which the vigor of your mind and the strength of your arm may be given? Do you not have longings like these, which you breathe to no one, and which you feel must be heeded, or you will pass through life unsatisfied and regretful? I am sure you have them, and they will forever cling round your heart till you obey their mandate. They are the voices of that nature which God has given you, and which, when obeyed, will bless you and your fellow men.” ― James A. Garfield, in a letter to a friend

“Go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don’t let anyone throw you off.” ― Joseph Campbell

“The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I’m sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond in the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of social norms. We act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us.
And no, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn’t involve tempering my life to better fit someone’s expectations. It doesn’t involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up.
This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can:
F—. That. S—.” ― xkcd

“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.” ― Erich Fromm

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ― Howard Thurman

“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.” ― Howard Thurman

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you have imagined.” ― Thoreau

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover!” ― Mark Twain

“None will ever accomplish anything excellent except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.” ― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“As you’re reading this, your life’s getting shorter. Its ticking away. I’m not saying this to frighten you. Or even scare you. Though it may. I’m saying this to awaken you. To inspire you. To rise you out of your deep slumber. To really know you wont live forever. To share your unique gifts. To ignite your great inner fire. To ignite your great inner strength. To ignite your great inner light. To shine. Brightly shine. To awaken your great inner beauty. To motivate. Yourself and others. To love. Yourself and others. To paint. To write. To teach. To innovate. To sing. To dance. To care. To feel. To listen. To learn. To laugh. The clocks ticking. The world needs you. Make your move.” ― Mike Litman

“Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.” ― Orison Swett Marden

Wha–?

Your IDEAL lifestyle costs less than you think.

(You just have to generate income, rather than earn income.)

The only way

The only way to really follow Christ is “sell all that you have and give it to the poor.” That’s what Jesus recommended to the dude who was itching to follow Jesus.

I mean, short of selling it all, what else is there?

Going to church?

Giving a pittance to a charity?

Talking about God with friends who already believe?

Sneaking scripture in your Facebook updates?

No. Shane Claiborne, and crew, has got it right. Just like that Jesus character.

Live. Do it, live.

http://www.vanagon.com/fun/stories/gift_of_a_dream.html

Movies have lost their appeal.

Movies have lost their appeal to me. There are no movies I feel I must see. I browse the classic titles, which used to be irresistible to me, and I find nothing I would pay or wait to see.

It is the state of film; but it is also me. A phase I must go through, where entertainment recedes to the least of my interests, and service, action, adventure, accomplishment, enlightenment hound me, urge me, chase me, burn me.

I am ready for more.